Chlamydial Immunity and Vaccine Development

沙眼衣原体A-L3血清型是高度地方性致盲沙眼的病原体，沙眼是发展中国家一种被普遍忽视的疾病，性传播感染(STI)在全球范围内流行。控制这些重要的人类疾病是该项目的长期目标。为此，我们的目标是开发一种安全有效的疫苗来预防这些疾病。衣原体固有的细胞内生活方式、复杂的发育生物学和抗原结构分别阻碍了疫苗开发的进展。衣原体疫苗开发的一个主要障碍是无法获得能够对引起眼生殖道感染的多种血清变量提供广泛反应性保护性免疫的抗原。这项工作的直接目标是发现具有适合开发针对衣原体感染的广泛基础多毒株疫苗的特性的抗原(S)，并在感染和疾病的临床前模型中测试候选疫苗。

Chlamydia trachomatis serovars A-L3 are the causative agents of hyperendemic blinding trachoma, a largely neglected disease of the developing world, and sexually transmitted infections (STI) that are epidemic world wide. Control of these important human diseases is the long term goal of this project. Towards this end our goal is to develop a safe and efficacious vaccine to prevent these diseases. The obligate intracellular life style, complex developmental biology, and antigenic structure of chlamydiae have severally hindered progress in vaccine development. A major hurdle in chlamydial vaccine development has been the unavailability of antigens capable of providing broadly reactive protective immunity against the multiple serovariants (15) that cause oculogenital infections. The immediate goal of this work was to discover antigen(s) with characteristics amenable for the development of a broad based multi-strain vaccine against chlamydial infections and to test the candidates in pre-clinical models of infection and disease.